WW2 6mm gaming on a 24cmx24cm gridded table - the rules journey and brief AARs

Introduction
The one liner: Playing a game with 6mm miniatures on a small table leads to a rules revisions and introduces a grid.

This very long post describes me replaying a small scenario a number of times as I revise the rules after each play.  The post is mostly about the rules journey but does provide 4 short battle reports with another post to provide a complete AAR for the last game.  The latest rules are here.

This post is split into the following sections to make it easy to ignore those you are not interested in:

• From Ancients to grids to WW2 – explaining the journey that got me to a gridded WW2 game on a small board.  It is likely more interest to those that tinker or write rules, or at least interested in such stuff!
• WW2 scenario overview
• WW2 grid rules overview
• WW2 game 1 – the first outing with the new rules that highlighted the need for activation and firing revisions.
• WW2 game 2 – the revisions are working but clarifications needed for grouped bases as firers or targets.
• WW2 game 3 – it mostly comes together but rallying from pinned and suppressed still needs work, and still more on grouped bases.
• WW2 game 4 – The game played OK but still not happy with activation and tracking of activations.
• WW2 game 5 (next post not this one) – it comes together, I am happy and no rules changes as a result (this is in a subsequent post and will provide a link when posted)

From Ancients to grids to WW2
I have no time for gaming as the focus of my life outside work has been on the major renovations to a house we are moving into later this year.  I was wondering how to try and fit in some gaming time around this and hit on the idea of playing some games during lunchtime.  I have a portable 6mm WW2 game that plays well on a A4 page but was thinking of ancients.  I have been revising my Ancient Battlefields Clash rules document to version 3 and they need more testing so I thought I could scale down to 6mm with 20mm wide bases rather than 40mm wide bases.  This would mean instead of the 60cmx60cm table, I could get away with using a 30cmx30cm board.  Two things drove me to using a 24cmx24cm board  - I actually am leaning towards that the 60cmx60cm is just a bit too large for the game (or the number of units need to increase slightly), and I had recently bought about 15 24cmx24cm felt covered gaming boards for $10 and was looking at how to use them.  So I created some 20mm wide bases out of the unbased ancient 6mm figures I had and took the board and the figures to work.  The first time I went to play I forgot I would need something to measure distances; the second I forgot I should pack dice (thought about using the phone to roll dice but too lazy); the third I forgot some reading glasses that I need to be able to make out the 6mm figures well.  The fourth attempt was a success!

Setup for an ancients game at lunch in the park - the fourth time.

Or at least a success in proving that it was not the right format.  20mm bases are very fiddly.  Just to repeat, 20mm bases are very fiddly.  I found it too hard to measure the small distances and then move the bases without them getting out of alignment (so they ended up facing in not quite the right direction). No problems – an opportunity to write some grid rules based on ABCv3! With grids the facing would not be fiddly and measuring distances is not an issue.  Why a grid and not hexes?  I have covered this in previous posts but it really boils down to I associate hexes with boardgames and grids/measuring with miniatures.  It would be a side project but may help inform the non-gridded ABCv3 rules.  I already have some grid rules for Ancients that are a version of Bill Banks Ancients to allow me to play battles generated by his Imperator game.  They use his defined unit types and is for quite small forces and works on an 8x8 grid.  I was not planning on using those.

So I wrote a version of ABCv3 that would work on a 12x12 grid.  12x12 as that allows for 20mm squares (to fit with the 20mm based 6mm figures) on the 24x24cm board and would be equivalent to 48x48cm board with the ABC rules with 40mm bases. Close enough it would play similarly.  I played these twice but decided not to continue with playtesting another ancient ruleset.  ABC does not have bases lining up so frontally 2 bases can be attacking one base.  On a gridded table they are lined up.  Some of the ABC rules interactions and outcomes are based on local superiority of two bases on one.  So how to carry that over to a square based game? Hmm.  It got too hard.  I went around and around with only allowing one on one.  Allowing three on 1; allowing 1 on one but cannot move down the side of a unit.  It was getting taxing for my poor brain and I was looking for a way to test out the ABCv3 rules, not create a new ruleset!  So rather than keep testing a gridded version of ABC that would play differently to the non-gridded ABC, my thoughts turned to reusing the grid with  the other 6mm figures I have – WW2.  Note I also considered branching out and playing some more Medieval naval games but decided I would stick with the green grid to get some use out of it.

WW2 scenario overview
I have a draft excel spreadsheet based on Platoon Forward (plug: excellent campaign generator – everybody should get it!).  It only works for Brits as the player and it is a bit (i.e. a lot) clunky.  I thought I could use this as an opportunity to fix it up and add in some other nationalities.  Especially as I wanted to do some East Front rather than West Front.  I spent about an hour on it and then thought – hey, I should be writing the rules and playing rather than automating a campaign generator!  And I could always look at scenarios.  But in the end I just grabbed some terrain and set it up in about 2 minutes.  I decided I would have a road with a village defended by the Germans.  And some wheatfields.  This is what ended up as the battlefield.  There are not really hedges in Russia so even though they are hedges on the table, think of them as some sort of cover – ditches, rocks etc.

Setup - Russians attacking from the left, Germans defending on the right.

I set it in 1943 with Regular German and Russian units.
Objective: Soviets need to clear the village of Germans.

Germans
Regular army
1 MMG team
1 Gruppe with Zug leader
2 Gruppe

Soviets
1 HQ squad (with leader)
1 MMG team (Maxim)
5 Squads

The Germans have the edge in command structure but morale wise they are equivalent.

WW2 grid game overview
I had already marked the board as 20mm squares and my 6mm WW2 bases would fit into them.  But what scale?  Six months ago, my idea to get back into WW2 was to play a few more 20mm skirmish games on a 2’x2’ table, using either single figures or using my company rules with 3 figures representing a company.   I was not going to use single 6mm figures as I would not be able to differentiate them enough to know who was who – although it would look pretty good!  So I will use 1 base (with 3-4 figures) = 1 section/squad.  Looking at having about 10 bases at most of the table, that is a game with a company on the table. A company has an attack frontage about 300-500m, my 20mm reinforced rules use a scale of 1:450 on half a table tennis table so I crunched some numbers and 1:1500 is where I ended up.  So figure to ground scale is 1:5 which is not too bad (I have found I can cope up to about 1:8).  This gives each square representing 30 metres and the 24cm square table of 12x12 20mm squares being 360mx360m that lends itself well to company level encounters.  I wanted a fairly dynamic game so brushed off my latest not very well tested skirmish rules, changed the activation and created the rules on a one-page QRS.  The rules actually are only the QRS – I do need to flesh them out with the actual rules themselves!

The rules have been fleshed out and are here.

QRS
The one page QRS has the rules for activation, spotting, close combat, firing, Calling indirect HE, fire results, weapon stats (infantry and artillery only), rally and force morale:

First draft of the QRS that is also all I wrote of the rules.

The rules that changed a lot between games were activation and weapon stats. Less so were the modifiers for firing and rally.  I will follow and discuss the changes made to these areas as I go through the games.

Following are the main rules used for the first game:

Activation

1d6

1	Event (effects side just activated)
2	Allies receive 1 activation
3	Allies receive 2 activations
4	Axis receive 1 activation
5	Axis receive 2 activations
6	Side with better command receives 1 activation.

Cannot activate a stand in two consecutive activations

Note: By end of game 4 the opposing side received an single post-activation on rolls 2-6

Firing
Firing (including weapon stats):

Infantry to hit: 1d/2d/3d - hard/soft/open

Pinned and suppressed count minimum as soft cover

+1d	Infantry clustered (2+ in contact)
-1d	Firer moved or pinned
+1d	Target within 2g (not direct HE)
-1d	Target more than 12g

Modifiers to vehicle defence #d

-1d	Vehicle target pinned, suppressed, immobilised
+1d	Bazooka etc. V Shurtzen
+1d	Optional: Allied sandbags etc.

If firing at grouped bases(i.e. adjacent), roll a separate 1d per adjacent base if rolling

Note: by game 4 the firing at grouped bases rules had gone and the +1d for clustered firers was modified to a single 1d extra attack per adjacent firer.

<4 dice.="" o:p="">

 Result

	Infantry	Vehicle
1	Target pinned; move 6 not in cover/enemy in 12.	Pinned.
2	Target suppressed.	Pinned; Damaged
3	1 target destroyed/KO; adjacent pinned
4/5	1 target destroyed, rest pinned (5 = suppressed)

Pinned: ½ move (in cover or out of LOS) or fire -1d

Suppressed – no move or fire

Soft/transport vehicles” pinned/damaged = KO

Vehicle 2 x damaged = KO

Base	Infantry target	Armour target	Range
Infantry	x1	2/-1*	12
SMG infantry	x2	2/-1*	4
50-60mm mortars	x1	-1	3-12
PIAT, Bazooka	+1d	4	4
Panzerfaust	+1d	5	3
ATGren	x1	3	2
LMG (German)	x2 (x3)	2/-1	12
MMG (German)	x3 (x4) x1 0g-4g	-1	24

Note: by end of game 4 the infantry target dice rolls for most auto weapons had changed.

Rally

pinned auto-rally at end of activation

+1d leader within 3” OR unpinned/ unsuppressed base adjacent.

Note that an activated base can move (not double move) and attempt to rally an adjacent base.

Maximum of 3d can be rolled for rally.

1d  Green

2d Regular

3d Veteran

1+ Success:  suppressed becomes pinned

Failure: rout

Note: by game 4 there was no auto-rally for pinned (had to roll to rally from pinned) , a rallied unit could immediately move/fire and the +1 for leader/adjacent base became a -1 modifier if there was no leader/adjacent base.

WW2 game 1
The game was over very quickly.  The centre 2 squads and the Maxim moved up to the hedge in the centre and were promptly decimated by fire from the village.  Other squads moving up on either flank were also suppressed or routed whenever they appeared.  The German troops were untouched.  The Soviets lost so quickly due to the firing rules.

Game setup - Germans on the left defending the village, Russians at right attacking.

The centre platoon moves up.  The plan is to lead with the centre and figure out which is the better flank to us to assist.  The platoon immediately come under fire from the German MG and all the sections are suppressed (indicated by the green bushes behind them).  

The centre platoon rallies off the suppression but lose a section to MG fire

And the centre platoon is no more, succumbing to intense MG fire.  This is when I began to think that maybe my MG rules may be a little too powerful.

Apologies for the shadows on the table - the downside to playing outside in the park.  Anyway the two Russian flanks have both advanced.  The left flank is in close combat with the lone German section guarding that side of the village.  The right flank, with the company commander, has advanced into the woods.  Hopefully this flank will manage to cross the field and attack the Germans in the woods on that side.

The right flank has been spotted by the German MG and loses a squad. 

A wider shot to show that the wind has picked up and the paper houses are in trouble!  This shows that I have created a wind break using my sandwich container and a mandarin.  I am also using the top of the sandwich container as a dice tray.  In the game itself, the left flank wins the close combat and advances closer to the village.

The Russians get a section as a reinforcement (random event).  The left flank is in trouble as it loses a section to the German MG.  The right flank is also wiped out with the remaining section and company commander routed.

The Russians have lost a fair amount of bases so I roll for a force morale check. The Russians fail and so retreat off the battlefield without getting very close to achieving their objective.

Just a quick picture of the figures box.  This contains a bunch on 6mm ancients (on the left) with the small terrain, markers, bases and some dice taking up the rest of the space. 

Changes post game
MGs: The way I had it is that an MMG rolls twice the number of dice that a rifle squad would roll.  So a rifle squad would roll 2d against a squad in soft cover, and also 1d for adjacent squads.  Therefore an MMG would be rolling 4d against its primary target, and 2d against adjacent targets in soft cover.  4d gives a good chance of a rout, and almost certainly suppression. 2d has a small chance of a rout but a reasonable chance of suppression.  So anything the MG fired at was bound to rout or be suppressed. I had a massive rethink after this and decided that it should not really be x2 a squad and be the same as a squad (which aligns to the strength I give it in my other rules so the x2 was really an anomaly).   So MGs fire at a primary target with the same dice as a rifle squad and up to 2 adjacent targets with 1d.  Much better.

Base	Infantry target	Armour target	Range
MMG team	x1 +1+1 0-4g: x1	-1	24

Activation: Activation, where to start?  Rolling every turn for 1-2 activations was just too much die rolling, and also one side got a lot of activations in a row (the Germans who rolled 2 5s and so got 4 activations with no Soviet response).  I am moving from cards in these rules for portability reasons, although I have dabbled in other dice activation systems – notably the WW2 rules on a 4x3 grid but with only 12 squares it seemed to work.  I found that it was a chore to roll to get an activation, and then roll again for another one.  So I have made a slight change – on rolls 3 and 5 when a side gets two activations, the other side then automatically gets 1, and on a 6 if there is no better side them each side gets one activation.  This will mean less rolling for activation, and less chance of a sequence of activations by only one side.

1	Event (effects side just activated)
2	Allies 1 activation
3	Allies 2 activations then. Axis 1
4	Axis 1 activation
5	Axis 2 activations then Allies 1
6	Side with better command receives 1 activation else 1 each, starting with non-previous.

Lastly, I forgot a rule I had that if you missed in firing and if there was an unsuppressed base that could fire back at you, roll 1d and apply the result to the firing base (to simulate reactive fire).  I completely forgot this, although the Germans never missed.

WW2 game 2
A completely different game to the first one but still not very satisfying.  The game went for a very long time due to the harder to kill change.  So that bit was good.  But what happened now was that a unit was pinned or suppressed, next activation was rallied and then it was back to the other side that then pinned/suppressed them again!  The entire game was spent by firing to pin/suppress and then rallying only to be pinned/suppressed again. A very static game. So while this may or may not be realistic, it certainly is not fun.  It is spending the game constantly pinning and suppressing and hoping that a failed rally causes a base to rout – a very slow game.  While this may be how it goes in real life I wanted to compress this so that the game was not so long and offered up some tactical decisions quicker, rather than waiting for a failed dice roll.

The setup if you are not familiar with it by now.  Russians below, Germans defending the village at top.

Russians advancing up the left flank.  One section lost already, the other suppressed.

A Russian roll no-one like to see - 4 dice all blank - 1 in 16 chance.

The Russian squad on the left flank recovers and charges the German defenders.

...and is destroyed. Have no idea why the brightness was turned up on this shot.

Time to try the right flank.  The Russians advance to the woods and the edge of the field.  There is a 1 in 6 chance on an event and then a 1 in 12 chance of a reinforcement.  Counting carefully you can see the Russians received an extra squad.  This happened twice more.  Very rare!  Spoiler: did not help. 

Lots of firing but then easy Russian recovery.  Another Russian section shows up as a reinforcement. 

More Russians move up, get suppressed/pinned and then recover.  The game is becoming a game of fire and recovery.

End game.  Russians have actually been routed and they fail their force morale after making little to no headway against the Germans.

Changes post game

Pinning: The initial rules had pinned units fire with one less die.  Firing at bases in hard cover is normally one die so a pinned unit cannot do any damage to bases in hard cover.  Pinned units have hit the dirt but not really would suffer to much reduction in fire so I removed the constraint of reduced fire but did add the constraint that they had to fire at the closest known enemy unit.  This also made only three modifiers to worry about when firing at infantry.

-1d	Firer moved
+1d	Target within 2g (not direct HE) or infantry AT
-1d	Target greater than 12g

Rally: To speed up play, if successfully rallied from pinned or suppressed you can then move and/or fire.

Rally
pinned auto-rally at end activation

+1d leader within 1g.

Note that an activated base can move (not double move) and attempt to rally an adjacent base.

Maximum of 3d can be rolled for rally.

1d  Green

2d Regular

3d Veteran

1+ Success:  suppressed: now pinned and can move/fire

Failure: rout (option: rout if on failure another 1d =0s)

WW2 Game 3
Not many pictures in this game.  I think I was too busy playing.  This game was quite fast and once again the Russians failed to make it into the village.  However, for the first time they did a fair bit of damage to the Germans.  I think the rules are getting closer to where I want them to be.

The Russians with some great activation and firing dice have managed to rout the German guarding the left flank and actually advance to the middle of the table.  

The Russians manage to successfully assault the Germans in the woods but are forced back due to fire from the adjoining houses.  The MMG is whittling down the Russians sections/

End Game.  The Russians have got the Germans down to 1 section but they themselves are down to three sections when a force morale check sees them withdraw.

Changes post game

Pinned was auto-rally at end of activation (i.e. remove pin) so during activation could only fire but not move. A successful rally roll for suppression could see the base move and fire in that activation.  I had it so you could roll for rallying from pinned as well and then move and fire.  But if unsuccessful a pinned unit was rallied anyway.  This was too much  difference in how rallying worked for me.  The aim was to have streamlined rules.  One thought was to make a successful rally from suppression see the unit pinned for that activation. A pinned unit is automatically rallied at the end of activation.  But then would need to keep track of pinned units that were suppressed as they should not automatically rally at the end of the activation (or should they? – this would mean a rallied suppressed base’s only limitation is it cannot move. Hmm.) Very tempting but that would increase game time as the pinned unit cannot move forwards. So a suppressed unit would wait at least two activations before moving.  So I streamlined the rally mechanism: A pinned or suppressed must rally to improve, a unit cannot rally immediately after being pinned/suppressed, a rallied unit can move/fire as normal.  This way the pin/suppress effect will last at least one enemy turn. and an enemy can keep suppressing a unit.

Rally: I think rallying from pinning and suppression is still too easy – for regulars there is only a 25% chance of failure.  So made it harder with a -1 dice rolled for various conditions (no leader or no adjacent base).

Rally

1+ Success:  unsuppress/unpin & move/fire

-1 if checking suppressed and no leader in 1g or no adjacent unsuppressed base.

Note that an activated base can move (not double move) and attempt to rally an adjacent base.

Maximum of 3d can be rolled for rally.

1d Green

2d Regular

3d Veteran

Suppression failure: rout if on failure another 1d =0s

Firing: Got rid of the firing at grouped targets – I had it that if the a base had directly adjacent bases, you could fire 1d at an adjacent base, on top of any other firing at the main target or that adjacent base.  This was designed to incur a penalty for adjacency to offset the bonus you got form adjacency; the bonus being that you could move together and an adjacent base got to fire as well.  I have not got any artillery or mortars in these test games and indirect HE is going to affect a square area so in if indirect HW was in the game, there certainly is a penalty for being adjacent.  After these few games, I do not think there needs to be a penalty for being adjacent (other than better artillery targets!).

WW2 Game 4
Seems much better.  I was still confused on exactly what you could and couldn't do when pinned/suppressed and when you could do something. And I wrote the rules! More of making sure what I write is what I meant.  I also thought I was rolling a lot for activation.  I prefer flipping cards to determine what side may activate a unit but I am trying to use dice based activation and I have to roll them so much!  I had a plan to add a single auto-activation after one side rolled for activation. This also stopped long runs of activation for one side (that happened in this game).
On the game itself, it went quite well.  The Russians got a lot closer to the village objective and I felt to rules were creating a smother game.

The Russians advance on both flanks.

Continuing to keep getting activated a lot, the Russians also advance in the centre.

The Russian left flank has advanced into close combat with a defending German Gruppe.  Will they be successful for the first time in the replays? 

The left flank Russian sections rout the German defender and continue advancing to the village.

On the right, the Russians manage to advance into close combat with the German Gruppe in the woods!

There is a blurry photo I did not use showing the right flank Russian sections eliminate the Germans and advance into the woods.  We rejoin with this photo where fire from the village routs one section and forces the other out of the woods.  This loss,  combined with a loss from fire on the left flank and the centre taking its usual heavy beating, sees a failed force morale check by the Russians.  So close though!

Changes post game

Activation: Still unhappy with rolling too much for activation so added in the other side getting 1 activation after on a roll of 2 and 4 (so a roll of 2 and 4 has 1 activation for one side, followed by 1 activation from the other).

An I absolutely clarified activation and what it meant by not activating twice in a row – this was causing me a bit of a head spin – does rally count? Can you not rally twice in a row?  What about if you are suppressed in the enemy turn? In your turn? What happens if you get an activation opportunity twice in a row?  The other side does? So the clarification was more for me to just write in very simple terms what “a base cannot activate two turns in a row” actually means.

Activation (1d6)

1	Event (effects side just activated)
2	Allies 1 activation then Axis 1 activation
3	Allies 2 activations, then Axis 1 activation
4	Axis 1 activation then Allies 1 activation
5	Axis 2 activations, then Allies 1 activation
6	Better command (or non-previous if same) gets 1 activation then the other gets 1 activation.

Cannot activate a stand in two consecutive activations unless rallying from suppressed - this can be done each subsequent turn unsuccessful.

Who goes first? Do you roll for first activation?  So I clarified that the attacker goes first and 50% chance of 2 activations and 50% chance of 1 activation.

What happens if two events are rolled for in a row?  This happened (actually rolled aa 1 four times in a row).  So now the first event is for the previous activated side, the next one is for the other and subsequent events are ignored until at least an activation occurs.

Events: Increased events from 10 to 12 and added in 2 “good” events – there were 3 that affected any side, 1 good one and 6 bad ones.  This evened it up.

Overwatch: With card based activation I had it so a base could keep a card and then activate at any time, a form of overwatch.  I don’t have this here.  I grappled with allowing reactive fire but did not want to go down that route.  But what I did do was explicitly state that if an unknown enemy charged you to the front, or moved across your front from out of line of sight to another location that was out of line of sight and within 8 squares (about 250 metres), you could fire with 1d.  Unknown is unspotted and also has not moved or fired in your line of sight prior. This is mainly to slow down charging out of the middle of woods into the enemy, or dashing from cover across a road and into cover with no chance for the enemy to fire.

Game 5 (report in a soon to be posted blog post)
Yes! It all came together.  Well, at least a subset of the infantry rules anyway. It played how I wanted it to play.   Game report will follow in a subsequent blog post.


Verdict
Well, that was interesting.  I thought it would not be too difficult to covert my existing rules to a 12x12 grid for fewer troops and also replace card activation with dice.  Little did I know how different it would be!  The first issue was the lethality of the system. My normal rules have 3 “hit points” per base so each base is rolling the number of dice equal to its hit points.  Too lethal when making a base 1 hit point but rolling 2-3 dice on firing.  This required a huge shift in weapon firing factors and reducing the impact of modifiers.  I think it will really help in shaping the main ruleset I am working on.

I still prefer cards for activation.  I have tried a few different dice based activation methods for my various WW2 rules but I still find card based works best for me.  For portable game though, dice are easier than cards.

I am easily distracted and am considering using these rules on 8x8 with card based activation.  I am also thinking this leads to madness - I am beginning to have this dream of only ever gaming in 8x8 grids!  So I need to stop that now :-) I will try and remain sane and stick to 12x12 for grids and also try and get back to gridless gaming (I sure that is a thing - it has been so long!) I will attempt to avoid any dabbling into 8x8.  For the 12x12, I may even take it all the way up to a 30cm by 30cm board with 2.5cm grids rather than 2cm grids but still have it representing about 260m x360m so the distance scale is reduced compared to figure scale.  It should look a little better too.  Yeah, I know, radical thoughts to go *so* much bigger!